Episodes

Joyce Carol Vincent was pretty, bubbly, smart and talented. She also didn’t talk about her past and had parts of her life even those closest to her knew nothing about. Still, when the remains of a woman were found in a London bedsit in January 2006, about three years after the woman died, none of her friends or acquaintances realized it was the Joyce they had known. It just wasn’t possible. But really, it kind of was. Join us for Episode 28. And in recommendations, we talk about Nobel Prize w...

You might remember Phil Hartman from Saturday Live, where in the 1980s he was uproariously funny as Frankenstein in the ongoing Frankenstein, Tarzan and Tonto bit, or as the Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer (“Your world frightens and confuses me…” Trust us, it was funny). Or maybe you loved him on The Simpsons, where he did another lawyer, Lionel Hutz, and Troy McClure, a newscaster and former unmemorable actor, who always opened with, “You might remember me from such roles as…” And you also probably re...

When Blanche Kimball was stabbed to death in her home in Augusta, Maine, in 1976, police were stymied. She’d been stabbed 44 times and left to die, only found by police after neighbors became concerned at least a week after she was killed. Gary Raub — then Gary Wilson — was at the time tearing an alcohol and violence-fueled path through central Maine, but somehow avoided serious attention from the police. The case was one of Maine’s oldest cold cases. But in 2012, DNA and some smart cross-coun...

So, what do you do with a musical genius who loves guns and scares the hell out of people? Lana Clarkson Well, since he’s rich, more famous than famous and influential, nothing. Until someone gets hurt. Phil Spector, whose “wall of sound” production transformed the music of the 60s, spent decades bending people to his will with crazy antics and the threat of violence. Lana Clarkson, an actress and part-time hostess at the House of Blues in LA, didn’t know spector when she met him in February ...

Connie and Richard Dabate in happier times. In April, Richard Dabate was arrested on charges he murdered his wife in December 2015. The evidence against Dabate is a cyber-crumb track of electronic device information, the biggest ones provided by the Fitbit his wife was wearing when she was shot in their Connecticut home. Investigators said it’s the first time a Fitbit has been used to help bring murder charges against someone. More than 30 years before, another woman was killed, also by a Conne...

Updates on Logan Marr (episode 18) and Anthony Sanborn (episode 22). Find out how Logan Marr’s sister, Bailey, turned out. Some good news for a change. On the other hand, in the ongoing saga of Anthony Sanborn, the Portland, Maine, man recently freed on bail after 27 years in prison, find out what a case investigator had in his attic all these years. Hint: The defense might have liked to see it.

Frances Schreuder wanted desperately to be a member of high society, but she just didn’t have enough money to bankroll it. So she did what a lot of women would do — got her teenage son to kill her incredibly wealthy but tight-fisted father. You may not recognize the names now, but the murder of Franklin Schreuder spurred several true crime books and two — yes TWO — TV docudramas. And if that’s not enough fun, we also talk about some of Maine’s most notorious tourist-area murders. Join us for ...

Portland Press Herald Photo When 16-year-old Jessica Briggs was found dead under the Maine State Pier in Portland in May 1989 — stabbed, beaten and eviscerated — police quickly narrowed their focus to her fellow street kids. They arrested her sometime boyfriend Tony Sanborn in 1990, he was convicted of her murder in 1992 and an appeal failed in 1994. In April, after 27 years behind bars, Sanborn was let out on bail after attorneys spent more than a year combing through police and prosecution fi...

Today’s quiz: After 9/11, what was the worst act of terrorism on U.S. soil? You know, the one that killed more people than any other? That’s right, Oklahoma City. Don’t you feel people have kind of forgotten about that one? In any case, we talk about Tim McVeigh the twisted white supremacist whose bomb killed 168 people, including 19 young children in a day care center in 1995, including what led him to it and what happened after. Episode 21. You never know what we’re going to say. Neither do ...

Ah, bucolic small-town life, where everything is wonderful. NOT. More like, where everything can be a real cluster f***. Take Franconia, New Hampshire, in 2007 for instance. Mix in a messed-up kid, a hard-ass cop and a vigilante gun-nut bystander and the only outcome there’s going to be is trouble. On May 11, 2007, Like Kenney shot Franconia police Cpl. Bruce McKay, then ran him over, at a traffic stop after McKay pepper-sprayed him. Bystander Greg Floyd then fatally shot Kenney with McKay’s gun...

The audience listens as Brenda Buchanan tells them what the deal is. In a VERY SPECIAL episode, we feature the April 2 Noir at the Bar event, in which a dozen members of the Maine Crime Writers blog and some guest speakers read (brief!) passages from their work. The Maine Crime Writers blog is a loose group of published mystery and crime writers who live in, and often write about, Maine. The genres run the gamut from cozy to hard-boiled — a little something for everyone. There may even be some l...

Logan Marr was too young to understand why the state of Maine kept taking her away from her mother. Her mother, Christy Baker, didn’t really understand either. Baker did everything she was asked, but a tangle of poverty, culture and, most importantly, a bureaucracy that valued its own prejudices over the well-being of a child and her mother, won out. Logan Marr died at the age of 5 at the hands of a foster mother who, if state rules were followed, shouldn’t have had her in the first place. She a...

Martha Moxley was bludgeoned to death, then stabbed through the neck with the broken end of a golf club when she was 15. If it had happened in 2015, an arrest probably would have been made almost immediately. But it happened in 1975 in an exclusive gated neighborhood in Connecticut and the man finally convicted in 2002 — Michael Skakel — came from a rich, powerful family that did everything it could to make sure police couldn’t do their jobs. And now, 15 years after his conviction, his money and...

It was the best of times, then the worst of times, for two con men — and their marks — as they separately traveled America using one of the country’s most famous and powerful names to wheedle their way into the hearts and minds of the rich. And ultimately, for one, to commit murder. What drove these two very different men — one French, one German — to call themselves Rockefeller? And why did people who should know better buy it? It’s a funny, shocking, tragic and ultimately sad story. Join us ...

Everyone makes stalking jokes. Everyone. But from the time it first came into modern public perception as a thing, to the recent murder of singer Christina Grimmie, and for millions of regular people who aren’t celebrities and have to live with it every day, it’s not a joke at all. What’s happened since the vicious 1982 attack on actress Theresa Saldana, or the 1989 murder of actress Rebecca Schaeffer? Or even since the June murder of Grimmie? And when did we actually start calling it stalking?...

We don’t mail it in when we discuss the spate of US Postal Service-related shootings over a 20-year period that spurred the phrase “going postal,” particularly one in Edmond, Oklahoma, in 1986 that changed the way we look at mass shootings. Patrick Shirrell wasn’t the first disgruntled worker to shoot up his workplace, but when he killed 14 coworkers, it riveted the nation and brought us in to a new era. His was the deadliest of dozens of post office and/or postal working shootings from the earl...

Nearly 16 years after Washington intern Chandra Levy disappeared and nearly 15 after her remains were found in Rock Creek Park in Washington, D.C., police are no closer to convicting someone of her murder. That’s despite one trial and conviction, a scheduled then dumped retrial and the extremely unhelpful “goofiness” of Gary Condit, the California congressman the 24-year-old was having a secret affair with when she disappeared. Sex, drugs, jailhouse snitches, sleazy middle-aged men who lead on ...

Former Kalamazoo, Michigan, Uber driver Jason Dalton, 45, is charged with killing six people and wounding two others in a rampage he says was prompted by his Uber app, which had Satan’s head and told him to kill. [Yahoo News photo]From drunken assaults to sex trafficking to an Uber app in which Satan told the driver to kill, the ride-share business has had plenty of crime during its short life. Drivers, passengers, bystanders — everyone joins the party. We discuss some of the highlights from our...

One of New Hampshire’s longest-standing mysteries — the discovery of the remains of a woman and three children in Bear Brook State Park — was solved (kind of) when a young woman searching for her birth parents with DNA set off a series of events that revealed a cross-country serial killer. Bob Evans — or Gordon Jensen, Lawrence Vanner, Curtis Kimball, Gerald Mockerman or any number of aliases — killed prolifically. And he seems to have mostly killed women he was in relationships with and their ...

Some of the more than 900 who died at Jonestown November 1978. [Dave Hume Kennerly/Getty Images]What seemed like a good thing for people on the margins when it started out turned into one of the most horrific tragedies of the late 20th century, thanks to a narcissistic megalomaniac who had just enough charisma to convince politicians he was a godsend and to leave him alone, get a thousand people to follow him into the jungle and ultimately get many of them to kill their children then die because...

A special road trip episode as we talk in the car ride home from Washington DC about the Women’s March and other stuff. Fun fun fun with one million others! What’s the deal with the crowd count? The guys who were there? What was the deal with the boy in the tree? What DID he see? What we saw, did, heard. Why the hell did we go, anyway? Not a lot of crime, just a lot of stuff. This is a departure from our usual, so if you would rather hear about crime (and stuff), check out our other episodes. W...

What happens when the details of a tragedy become the foundation of internet legend? We discuss the Massachusetts nursing student’s disappearance on a dark New Hampshire road as the 12-year mark approaches, its connection with the Vermont disappearance of 17-year-old Brianna Maitland a month later, as well as the possible Boston serial killer of young mostly drunk men and a bunch of other stuff. And we tie it together. we promise. We also discuss the CSI Effect with lawyer Matt Nichols and the...

Maine has one of the lowest murder rates in the country. For the past couple of decades, there have been between 20 to 25 homicides a year in the state. In 2016, there were 16. Yet, the types of murders Maine has are telling — murder victims are most likely to be killed by someone who professes to love them. We take a look at three of 2016’s Maine homicides on this week’s episode. We also learn not to take presumption of innocence lightly from a fired-up Matt Nichols in Ask a Lawyer, and what ...

The Ramsey house after JonBenet’s disappearance. (Kari Gehring/Liaison) It’s been 20 years since the body of JonBenet Ramsey was found in the basement of her parents’ Boulder, Colorado home. She’d been bludgeoned to death and strangled. The case has, to quote one documentary “haunted America” ever since and, America being what it is, spawned a variety of documentaries over the past months, some good but most not so much. We discuss some of the docs, as well as the “evidence” and evidence of the...